


maybe just a little

by neonbreadsticks



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Beauty - Freeform, Coffee, Falling In Love, Ferrari - Freeform, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, Rings, Small things, Switzerland, falling and finding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25928671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonbreadsticks/pseuds/neonbreadsticks
Summary: Kimi doesn’t remember much these days. Only the soft glow of the sunlight through the beige curtains, and the smell of the flowers in the garden before they bloom. The sound of a beat-up Aston Martin idling in his driveway and his dustless shelves in his living room. The curve of Seb’s lips, pulled back against his cheeks, the crows feet that only appear when he laughs at things beyond Kimi’s level of understanding.Kimi doesn’t remember much these days, but he remembers enough.
Relationships: Kimi Räikkönen/Sebastian Vettel
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	maybe just a little

**Author's Note:**

  * For [secondlifetime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/secondlifetime/gifts).



Kimi doesn’t remember much these days. Only the soft glow of the sunlight through the beige curtains, and the smell of the flowers in the garden before they bloom. The sound of a beat-up Aston Martin idling in his driveway and his dustless shelves in his living room. The curve of Seb’s lips, pulled back against his cheeks, the crows feet that only appear when he laughs at things beyond Kimi’s level of understanding. 

Kimi doesn’t remember much these days, but he remembers enough. 

And when gentle snores float through the room, more loudly than Kimi would’ve liked, he doesn’t complain. Seb has every right to be tired. And so Kimi picks the half-open book on gardening off Seb’s chest and straightens it out. It’s placed on the bedside table next to a half-finished cup of coffee, a wrinkled newspaper clipping of the 2018 United States Grand Prix, and the gold ring that Seb takes off every night before climbing into bed. 

( _I don’t want to lose it._ He’d said.)

And Kimi watches because with every rise of Seb’s chest comes the fall all too quickly. Like he’s gulping in imaginary chunks of air, choking before he digests. Like someone had dropped all his trophies onto his chest at once. His lashes tremble. 

A silent plea for help that Kimi answers with the practised flair of a modern-day lover. He presses a silent kiss to Seb’s temple. To remind him that there’s a safety net. 

Seb’s breath hitches, and he continues snoring. He breathes without suffocating. 

So Kimi checks the drawer of his bedside table to see if the box is still there, and finally switches off the lights, because he knows that Seb will be up before he is, gardening book in his hands, ring back on his finger, claiming he isn’t tired while filling the bags under his eyes with shocking amounts of coffee. 

Kimi looks forward to it. 

\--------------------

Despite popular belief, Kimi doesn’t meet Sebastian when they’re both forced into a room full of Ferrari memorabilia and a mandatory colour scheme of red. Kimi meets Sebastian under open sky, with a thousand different colours dancing before his eyes. He meets Sebastian when thick Belgian air burns hot against his cheeks and feels a hand landing heavily on his back. Hears _congratulations_ with its edges dipped in a thick German accent that hasn’t quite learned to subside yet. 

He nods and thinks nothing more of it. Because Sebastian is nothing more than a floppy-haired German boy with a couple podiums stuffed messily under his RedBull cap, letting the expectations of his new team hang from his fingers like empty shopping bags. 

And some part of Kimi is strangely surprised when Sebastian does nothing but drink in the silence that so many before him had struggled to swallow. He doesn’t have the hunger in his eyes. He doesn’t ask for more than he’s offered. 

Sebastian’s smile is lopsided. Genuine. Reaching his eyes and fizzling in the air around him. 

And when he turns to leave the podium, Kimi can only offer congratulations of his own before getting off the top step. 

He still feels Sebastian’s smile even after he’s left the building. 

\--------------------

Kimi is right in the sense that Seb is already awake. 

Kimi is wrong in the sense that Seb would still be in bed. 

Because the sheets on Seb’s side are already cold and the blanket is pulled all the way up to Kimi’s chin. 

( _Even the Iceman gets cold sometimes._ Seb had laughed on an unusually windy day in Switzerland. Seb’s scarf had stopped his shivering.)

There’s a cup of coffee on Kimi’s bedside table. It’s already gone cold. 

When Kimi goes downstairs he notices that the scuffed white sneakers are missing from their place on the shoe rack. 

Seb’s car is not in the driveway. 

So Kimi toasts some bread and scrambles some eggs and waits at the counter with his cold cup of coffee for Seb to come home. 

He hopes Seb is doing alright. 

  
  
  


Seb is back. 

And Kimi knows that Seb is back because he can hear the low hum of the idling engine in the driveway. 

Kimi waits for it to stop. Waits for Seb to come in and throw his keys on the counter and throw himself onto the sofa and start talking about his spontaneous trip to god knows where. 

The engine idles for a few minutes and keeps going. 

It keeps going until Kimi gets up, holding his coffee in one hand and something that feels a lot like worry in the other. He opens the door and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. 

The engine dies out. 

And even though the sun has still barely made it over the mountains in the distance, Seb looks drained. Tired. Whether it’s from a poor night’s sleep or an early awakening, Kimi isn’t sure. 

Seb stumbles down the driveway. His feet don’t seem to be touching the ground, floating, walking like one would hold an antique ― gingerly, carefully, feeling it out, feather-light touches of uncertainty and familiarity all confused in one simple action. 

And then he reaches Kimi and Kimi feels him sink. Feels Seb collapse against his chest and feels his breath in shuddering, shivering shards against his cheek. He holds Seb close and doesn’t say anything. 

He hopes Seb will be alright. 

\--------------------

Kimi has an impression of Sebastian this time. Or rather, he’s expected to have an impression. Because news articles illustrate the glorious painting of Sebastian Vettel, the floppy-haired German man with a big ego on a RedBull throne, bearing a crown made out of four world titles. 

_He’s arrogant._ They say. _Selfish. Greedy._

And they try to drill these into Kimi’s mind in every single press-conference and every single interview. But when Sebastian enters the room, they quieten. They bow their heads in mock respect and salute him. _Prodigy!_ Their lips froth with empty admiration. _Saviour! King!_

Kimi can’t help but think Sebastian looks a little lost. But then again, all the red can take awhile to get used to. Sebastian fiddles with the collar on his new Ferrari shirt. Smiles at people who whisper and point at him. 

Kimi almost feels bad for him. Because Sebastian Vettel is nothing more than a floppy-haired German boy, shackled by the expectations of a new team, dragging the heavy load of four titles by his ankles. 

So he makes his way across the length of the room and says the most welcoming thing he can manage. 

“Hi.”

He catches the way Sebastian’s shoulders sag in relief. 

“Hello, I’m Sebastian.” He pauses. “But you can call me Seb.”

“I’ll stick to Sebastian.”

The German smiles wider. 

“Okay.”

\--------------------

Today, Seb is out in the garden. 

Seb out in the garden, surrounded by pots of roses and daisies and sunflowers. His gardening book is nowhere to be found. 

(A few weeks ago, Seb had returned with way too many pots of flowers. _I’m going green._ He’d told Kimi.)

And through the windows made of frosted glass, Kimi watches as Seb lays down in the middle of the garden.

Thunder rumbles somewhere in the distance. He should probably ask Seb to come in. 

But when he makes his way outside, Seb is squinting at something in the sky. And so Kimi follows Seb’s gaze past him, eyes watering in the dry Swiss air, focussing on a patch of blue, just barely visible between the grey clouds. 

Seb doesn’t ask Kimi to sit with him. But he does try his best to smile. 

He points at the sky. 

“Look.”

Kimi sits with him. He looks. 

And maybe it’s the colour contrast to the grey perimeter, or maybe he just hasn’t been looking at the sky often enough, but in that handful of blue blue sky, Kimi sees maybe a little more than he used to. 

And he knows that Seb is seeing more than he is. Because through his lashes and squinting eyelids, Seb’s eyes reflect the blue in the sky, keeping it hostage, making it his own.

Because Seb has always seen more. 

They sit. On grass that’s long forgotten the taste of dew, in washed-out sunshine, breathing the complimentary air of God’s treacherous bake sale. 

Kimi doesn’t comment on the fact that Seb is still choosing to squint despite having his sunglasses in his hand. He doesn’t comment on the fact that the flowers are beginning to droop in their little porcelain pots. He doesn’t comment on the rain closing in. 

He hears the thunder and focuses on the blue. 

\--------------------

Kimi was right about Sebastian. Because in the span of six short months, Sebastian had proven everyone else wrong. He’d held their timid judgment in the corner of his eyes and filled their shelves with precious metal. His tongue had tasted their language and grown to love it. 

They still haven’t grown to love him. 

But they still haven’t grown to love Kimi either. 

And while Kimi’s head is swimming between too many glasses of mid-tier alcohol, he raises another in a toast _to the great Sebastian Vettel!_

No one says it with him, but that’s mainly because their only audience is a stupid bartender who actually believes that they don’t realise he’s been snapping photos of them for the past two hours. 

Sebastian raises his glass of water and smiles, with the might of the only fully sober man in all of Monaco. 

They toast and laugh and cheer a little too loudly.

They stumble through the night, liquor held steady by bottles of water. 

They forget the Scuderia and remember how to live.

\--------------------

His car smells more like dirt than anything else. 

The pots in the trunk rattle and threaten to crack with every single bump he goes over. Kimi watches as the leaves quiver and notes the way the stems bend.

He drives a little slower. 

  
  
  


When he returns, Seb isn’t in the garden. He’s on the sofa in the living room, thumbing through that one gardening book. It’s spine is beginning to crease. 

Music plays softly over the radio. It’s a Swiss radio station. 

“I got some stuff.”

Seb looks up. 

The pots are heavy, but Kimi manages to lift them onto the counter. He angles them. Makes sure that they’re pretty enough for Seb to look at. 

“Herbs. Easier to grow than flowers.”

Kimi waits. Seb doesn’t smile. He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t speak.

He stares at the pots that overflow with green.

And then the edge of his mouth cracks open with a shaky exhale. He twists the ring on his finger and moves, slowly, smoothly, turning to face Kimi. 

And Kimi just barely catches the watery shine in Seb’s eyes before Seb’s arms are around him and Seb’s face is buried in the crevice of his neck. 

“Thank you.”

\--------------------

Kimi was wrong.

He was wrong when he thought he could handle that extra little bit of booze that he’d poured down his throat the night before, and he was wrong if he thought that he wouldn’t feel it, sickly sweet and burning, on the tip of his tongue the morning after. 

His head was probably throbbing more than he would like to admit, but there’s nothing a good pair of sunglasses can’t hide. 

But Kimi is wrong, yet again. Because regardless of the brand, the price, or the quality, there’s nothing a good pair of sunglasses can hide from the German man standing in front of him. 

Sebastian walks slowly, in the middle of a rushing airport. He drags his bright red luggage behind him, cuts the crowd before him. He stops.

“One moment, sorry.”

He disappears into a nearby Starbucks, leaving Kimi swamped in Sebastian’s bags and his own headache. 

Finally, he returns, bearing two cups of coffee, and a smile somehow louder than whatever’s going on at the boarding gate to their left. He gives the one in his right hand to Kimi. 

“For your hangover.”

Kimi takes a tentative sip, expecting sugar and milk and the contents of whatever brown packet Sebastian is currently emptying into his own cup. 

And he’s surprised. Because he’s wrong again, and it’s nothing plain, black, and bitter, an injection of scalding warmth into his veins, a buzz beneath his skin. For a moment, his headache subsides. 

He almost smiles. 

“Thanks, Seb.”

He doesn’t realise until Sebastian is choking on his own coffee, froth coating his upper lip. 

“You called me Seb.”

\--------------------

Seb is pretending not to look at it. And it’s a valiant effort, really, because the calendar on the wall is just that strong of an opponent. 

Kimi looks at Seb over the edge of his newspaper. Seb looks at the calendar over his. The bottom corner of his paper threatens to dip itself into his bowl of muesli. Seb’s coffee sits untouched and ignored, probably cold, accompanied by two packets of brown sugar waiting to be emptied. He’s looking at the calendar. 

Seb is pretending that Kimi can’t see it. Because his brows are set in a perpetual frown and his hands are grasping the paper a little too tightly. 

Seb folds the newspaper and leaves the table. 

He forgets the coffee. 

There’s something wrong. 

Kimi waits until the footsteps escape up the stairs and into the bedroom and behind a closed door before he turns to look at the calendar. 

It takes awhile for him to figure it out, even though the only thing marked out is the first of September. There’s a bright red cross over it. And it’s messy. Bright red and messy, written by a calloused hand decorated with a gold ring. 

( _We should probably mark out all the races, no?_ Seb had asked, peeling the plastic off the brand new calendar.)

It’s less than two weeks away. And it’s been more than two weeks since Kimi had let the wheel of his horrifyingly slow Alfa Romeo go. More than two weeks since he’d tainted his blood with granite and petrol fumes. More than two weeks since he’d stopped and waited outside a bright red Ferrari motorhome for Seb to finish gathering his things. 

But there was something wrong. Because Seb’s eyes hadn’t softened at the prospect of racing, and his lips hadn’t pulled themselves apart to form a smile. 

There’s something wrong. 

  
  
  


The suitcase is open on the floor. It’s not bright red, but a grey that matches a poorly-vacuumed press conference carpet. 

And it’s, surprisingly, not empty, but half-full of shirts and jeans that are all in the same shade of blue. There is no red. Not yet. 

Kimi tosses Seb’s gardening book in too. Just in case he forgets.

\--------------------

It happens when Kimi’s brain is addled by more than just a couple drinks, common sense choked out beneath the surface of a whiskey glass, self-restraint strewn across the floor and crushed under the soles of his feet. 

He supposes they’ve earned it. 

To be granted a moment to forget their winless 2016 season, hearts filling with more than just a little emotion, blood pooling with more than just a little alcohol. 

And, of course, Seb doesn’t drink, but sits patiently by, nodding his head to the music, watching the heinous scene unfold before him. The yacht is loud, to say the least. Filled with men who lose themselves in drink and in spirit, filled with more who find themselves in constant limbo between the bar and the dancefloor. 

Kimi is both of these men. Seb is neither. 

But somehow they both wind up together, Kimi sick of trying to entertain the guests that flock around him for more than a glimpse of the mastermind behind this celebration of loss, and Seb desperately trying to outrun the woman that’s been making eyes at him across the bar for the entirety of the time he’s been here. 

They wind up on the deck, and Kimi hears nothing but the pounding of the bass, drowning out the sound of the waves rocking gently against the side of the yacht. Seb is staring at the water below them, not entirely focussed, eyes brimming with something Kimi can’t put his finger on. 

“What’s the matter?”

Seb shakes his head and laughs. 

And suddenly it feels less like an illusion and more like a daydream when Seb’s hands are around his neck and Seb’s smile is against his lips and the night sky bleeds and rains down around them, in a performance of pounding bass and gentle waves and soft kisses. And so they smile when their lips meet, and they lose with more valour than one would hope, because in the end they win, and find just a little belonging in an ocean of loss. 

When Kimi awakes, he awakes on a floor littered with faces he can’t put a name to, and drinks that will definitely stain the carpet. He awakes to a soft tap on his shoulder, and the strong smell of good black coffee. He awakes to a gentle smile that chides at him to get up. 

Seb offers him a hand. 

“Morning, Kimi.”

And it’s not because of the sheer lack of reporters, or the unconscious state of all his guests on the floor. Rather, Kimi does it because he feels like it. 

And so he presses his lips to Seb’s and feels the pounding of his own blood on his veins and tastes milk and sugar and coffee and Seb’s smile. 

“Morning, Seb.”

\--------------------

Kimi can’t say he’s excited. Because the sight of his name on the bottom of the scoreboard isn’t exactly something worth being excited over. Because the neckache the next day is hardly something he craves. 

But it’s racing. And it’s what he does. So he’ll love it until he doesn’t, and do it until he stops. 

He thought that Seb would be the same. 

Then again, it’s difficult. It probably hurts more. Knowing that you’re out of date, expired, run dry and out of fuel, nothing more than a yesteryear.

The Aston Martin rattles, run down and broken and pieced back together with every repair job that starts to cost more and more. Old shine and worn-out flair is Seb’s thing. The luggages in the back roll. 

Something that Kimi recognises to be The Beatles plays over the speaker system. Seb doesn’t hum to it, his face set in a constant mold of worry. 

“You’ll be okay.” Kimi offers. 

Seb sighs. 

“Yeah.”

He turns the music up to drown out the rattling.

\--------------------

“It’s dusty in here.” Seb laughs when Kimi opens the door. 

And it is. Because the shelves have been wiped probably less times than Kimi has stood on the top step of a podium, and the mere sight of his house would be enough to make an allergic person break out in hives. 

Kimi claims nostalgia as a pathetic excuse as he shuts the door against the biting Swiss wind, letting his shoes join the already growing pile in the hallway. 

Seb laughs some more. 

  
  
  


Seb is up before he is, already gone from the bed he’d so willingly climbed into the previous night. Kimi finds him downstairs, looking through the cupboards. 

Seb doesn’t turn.

“I’m finding a cloth. Your shelves need cleaning.”

And some part of Kimi wants to tell Seb to stop. That he likes it this way and that his sneezes are from nothing but the common monthly cold. 

He doesn’t. 

  
  
  


When Kimi gets back from the grocery store the next day, he’s both confused and borderline mortified. 

Because the shelves are clean, and in the place of his tiny mountain of shoes sits a brand new shoe rack. Seb’s white sneakers are placed on the top shelf. Their edges are beginning to wear. 

And unfamiliar music floats through the normally quiet house, bouncing off the walls and seeping through the dustless floorboards. Seb hums.

And when he sees Kimi, he smiles with something more than just a little pride. 

Kimi would be lying if he said he wasn’t grateful. 

Kimi would be lying if he said he said he hadn’t swooped Seb up in a hug. 

\--------------------

There are a couple things that Kimi doesn’t necessarily appreciate about racing. 

Like the fans in red, some loyal, many forgetful, tossing their 2007 World Champion into the malnourished contents of a Wikipedia page, hailing the youth that dare to take on the challenge. Kimi’s name is replaced by a better one. 

_Charles._

Already a prince, pretending he’s more. 

But Kimi only gives one of his two fucks to the fans that have left him, and gives the other to Seb. 

Because Kimi only gets to see Seb when the German is walking into a room-serviced hotel room, arms hanging from their sockets, circles under his eyes, parched for something other than overly scathing interview questions and data that proclaims him the lesser of the two red cars on the track. 

He doesn’t look at Kimi as he passes. He doesn’t throw his bag onto the armchair in the corner. 

He just stands there. Lost. In a room of his own belongings, in his would-be oasis. The mascot and the puppet of the Scuderia. 

“Are you okay?”

Kimi expects many things. What he doesn’t expect is for Seb to be crossing the room in less than five steps, for the tears to finally escape the blue, for the truth to hover, potent and pronounced in a light German accent.

Because Seb isn’t alright. And he hasn’t been alright for months between rushed press conferences and talks about his future and the fact that his time is already up before they’ve even found someone to replace him. Because no one sees Sebastian Vettel as the man he used to be and he’s just a good man in a red suit ready to be thrown into a recycling bin and shaped into someone better. Because his car won’t go fast enough. Because he’s lying to himself and to everyone around him when he says, week after week, that he thinks he’ll do better when he’s actually just wasting away. 

Because Kimi looks at him with more hope than he should be offered and because he’s crying in a hotel room in Brazil with nowhere else to go. 

Seb is falling and waiting for Kimi. Waiting for Kimi to grasp at the air over the edge of the cliff and to pull him back by a thread on the fraying seam of his Ferrari team gear. To listen for the cracks in his voice and to fix them with each passing second. To hold him until his words morph into sobs that echo against the walls of Kimi’s skull.

So Kimi does all of those and then some. Kimi catches Seb and hopes that he won’t slip through his fingers again. 

\--------------------

Kimi doesn’t believe in proclamations. 

Doesn’t believe that mouthfuls of _I love you_ s and cups of affection are needed on a daily basis, or at all, for that matter. 

And yet, somehow, the tiny box in his hand seems to be disproving it all. 

Seb is in the garden, hands in his pockets, watching the Swiss scenery with more admiration than just a casual tourist. 

To say that Kimi is nervous would be an absolutely spot-on statement, simply because Kimi doesn’t believe in proclamations.

So there is no speech. There are no words preaching unending, never-failing love. No fireworks. 

Only a nudge as he passes the box into Seb’s sweaty hands. Maybe more than just a little smile. 

Kimi knows that Seb understands. 

That it’s not an engagement. It’s a proclamation encased in a ring of gold, held tenderly in a little velvety box. A reminder that Seb has something to hold on to. A meldable promise that can mean whatever Seb wishes it to be. 

And so Seb laughs and cries and doesn’t label it. He wears it on his right ring finger and watches as it shines in the sunlight. He asks where Kimi’s is. 

  
  
  


That night, Kimi checks the drawer of his bedside table for the first time. Just to check if it’s still there. 

The other box is still there. Not a captor, but a guardian of a promise and a proclamation, stowed away safely in Ikea wood.

And so Kimi doesn’t wear his ring on his finger. Not because he’s ashamed, but because he doesn’t want to lose it. 

\--------------------

Kimi is there when it happens. When the world implodes and palms itch with feverish anticipation at that one announcement. When the future of the man in red matters more than his present. 

Seb sits at the counter with his head in his hands, and the hopes of many in his lap. There is a cup of coffee in front of him. The packets of brown sugar are still full. 

So Kimi crosses the room and tears the packets open. He empties them into the cup. 

“You’re going to be okay.”

And for the first time in more than just a couple of months, Seb smiles. 

And his eyes no longer drip with exhaustion, his lips no longer form a laboured sigh. 

Seb smiles. 

And maybe, Kimi smiles too. 

**Author's Note:**

> so this was the result of a conversation i had with my snazzy friend ;) about how it's the small things that matter more in a relationship and my brain immediately thought of simi, so big thanks dear for inspiring this fic. i won't say that i like it but i'm happy that it's finally finished! i also feel that kimi-centric fics are rather lacking in the community because of his personality, but everyone should get to have a fic written from their point of view :D maybe i should write happy things more often


End file.
